October 03, 2008

Groundbreaking mental health legislation passes

For more than a dozen years, advocates have fought to lift restrictions on mental health coverage in insurance policies.

On Friday, they won an enormous victory when Congress passed the Paul Wellstone and Pete Domenici Mental Health Parity & Addiction Equity Act of 2008.

The law doesn’t require health insurers to cover mental health care. But if they do, they’ll have to treat psychological and addictive disorders just as they do other medical conditions.

Put another way, insurers will no longer be able to limit the number of visits or charge higher deductibles and co-payments for mental health and substance abuse services.

“If you have insurance, then your mental health care must be equal to the benefits you get for any other disease,” said Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), quoted in a Reuters article. His daughter has schizophrenia.

President Bush signed the bill into law after it was tacked onto the $700 billion financial bailout bill the House of Representatives passed 263-171 on Friday.

The Associated Press notes that the law applies to health plans covering more than 50 employees, “potentially reaching 113 million people nationwide.”

The cost is estimated at $3.4 billion over 10 years. Insurance companies and businesses had argued for years that the change would make medical coverage more expensive, but came on board a compromise was reached earlier this year.

Last week, E. Neil Trautwein of the National Retail Federation told the New York Times: “Employers know that mental health issues can hamper the productivity of workers.”The law becomes effective in October 2009.

Organizations across the country applauded its passage. “This historic legislation is a victory for millions of Americans living with mental illnesses who face unfair discrimination in co-payments, doctor’s visit and hospital stays,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, predicted the legislation would help reduce the “stigma and discrimination” that people with mental illness and addiction experience.

“Nearly half of all patients with a mental health disorder do not receive needed treatment,” said Dr. Jeremy Lazarus, a board member of the American Medical Association. “Thanks to congressional action, we can bring an end to insurance discrimination against patients with mental health needs.”

While many states, including Illinois, have mental health parity laws, these do not apply to employers that fund their own insurance plans, including many large companies. Employees of those firms will be protected under the new national legislation.

Comments

This bill is as big a fraud as the $700 billion bailout it rode the coat tails of. Psychiatric fraud is the major area of medical fraud and this bill will ensure it stays that way. Its simply payback for the billions that big pharma has shoveled in the politicians pockets.

"The law doesn’t require health insurers to cover mental health care. But if they do, they’ll have to treat psychological and addictive disorders just as they do other medical conditions."

In other words, millions of people who currently have some mental health coverage as part of their employer-provided health insurance are about to lose it as the insurance companies hike rates on plans that include it.

The only real solution to the mental health coverage problem is to do what Oregon recently did: Require that all health insurance policies include mental health care coverage, AND that insurers "treat psychological and addictive disorders just as they do other medical conditions." Without both requirements, any legislative "remedy" is just a Band-Aid.

In theory it's a good bill, however most companies just won't cover it at all. That willl be their way out. The Blues only pickup 50% to a very low number. The policy that I have covers up to only $5k I believe and the physical medical is in the millions. The chem docs know this and that is why you are all of a sudden cured when your insurance tops out. Same for the private behavioral hospitals. The way it works is that people that have insurance stay at the nice places until their insurance runs out. People w/o insurance are shuffled out to State runned facilities and those are real scary. More times than not the person starts to feel great all of a sudden when they realize that they are going to a State runned facility. Either way they send you home with a bag of chems of which they disclaim that they will help you. They will help the shrinks chem stocks though.

“This historic legislation is a victory for millions of Americans living with mental illnesses who face unfair discrimination in co-payments, doctor’s visit and hospital stays,” said Michael Fitzpatrick, executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Mr. Fitzpatrick errs, it is a victory for everyone: The father who cannot pay for his daughter's illness, the family that cannot pay for its Dad's illness, The doctor who cannot treat a patient, the hospital that cannot admit a patient, the hospital that discharges a patient too early, a doctor who cannot write a prescription, a druggist who cannot fill it.

The responsibility to protect persons from coercion through mental health law parity provisions is real, nonetheless. Thomas Szasz Law and Psychiatry reminds care-system participants of agency and independence being fundamental to, mental health. Definitions of 'normalcy' and what methods of human assessment are meaningful, require frequent critical review and qualitative evaluation. Noise pollution, eradication of poverty, prohibition of denigration of the image, identity or person and public environment improvement all can foster the social ecology of wellbeing with timely concomitance. The attitude of respect and care will uplift the purpose-driven, encourage initiative again if recognized and waged by campaign, a federal-book budget, ending the occupation and shifting the US image from militarism to cultivation of ideas and aspirations, again.

Hey just what us taxpayers need, now we get to pay for drug addicts and pushers to get treatment, who will continue the cycle of addiction/treatment/addiction/treatment........ but hell after bailing out wall st for 800 billion who cares right????

The bill is not a good idea. Certainly there exist mental health difficulties, and no offense to parents who believe in schizophrenia. But psychiatry says schizophrenia is a "mental disorder" and offers to drugs symptoms while not taking a step toward putting mental order into mental disorder.

The effectiveness of mental health care has less to do with the quality of medications, as it does the continuity of care. Regular contact with mental health professionals during acute illness episodes, recovery, and remission encourages the cultivation of coping techniques and stress reduction, family investment in health outcomes, medication compliance -- many of the social and behavioral determinants of illness severity. Insurance policies that limits contacts with these professionals potentially disrupts this continuity. It leads to patients seeking care only when their illnesses have progressed so far that interventions are expensive and limited. Further, it leave much of the diagnostic and treatment decisions in the hands of primary care physicians, rather than specialists. This bill has the potential to significantly decrease patients' suffering, improve patients' social well being, and increase productivity in the workplace. I look forward to seeing and benefiting from these new policies.

I don't know all the fine print of this new law. There is certainly a problem with insurances not covering realistic psychiatric treatment and doctors who send patients home when insurance runs out not when the right meds are found and the patient is stabil on them, is all to real. But, depending on the terms of this new law: most insurance policies have a life time limit up to which they insure. Mental patients are in the hospital often, because that is the safest way of inducing medications. What happens if these patients use up their life time limit with all the short and medium term hospitalizations and eventually develop physical diseases from the meds or age which the insurance doesn't pay anymore?

It seems to me that such an addition to insured conditions should also include a higher life time insurance limit, or 20 years down the road, there will be scores of duly insured cancer patients without access to care.

Much of psychiatry is about "Bedlam", money power, control, greed, politics, Religion, perks, and kickbacks. Much of psychiatry is pseudo-science, fake healing, mad doctoring, sham, con game, wicked witchcraft. Thousands and thousands of dollars are extorted from insurance companies, taxpayers, and the hostage if they are stupid enough to pay for the fraud. They will fight, argue, hit below the belt, lie, defraud records in order to extort every cent they can out of insurance companies for what is in their own sickness. for concocted stories and pack of lies. The truth about the psychiatric drugs can be found at "drugawareness.org". Society is full of psychiatric horror stories. Todays success, tomorrow's tragedy.

What came my way was that they invented a bunch of new fake labels involving these bills.
Much of it is Ideology and Propaganda. When it comes to "Forensic Science, Time Line, Alibi, Motive, Reality, etc. they flunk big time. It amounts to "Enterprise Corruption", "Racketeering" etc. Both so-called mental health and the schools are run soviet-style. There are different groups that protest at their conventions. Even some psychiatrists work along with survivors.

"Forensic Science", the scars of survivors do not match the concocted stories of abusers, predators, perpetrators, corrupt officials, Gestapo, etc. Actually Hitler used psychiatrists during the cold war. Our government brought them here from Nazi Germany. According to Amnesty International's 1976 book "Prisoners of Conscience in the USSR," Haldol was routinely used to torture dissidents in Soviet psychiatric prisons.

Much of psychiary is psychological warfare. There is not any test that will tell if one has any mental illness. EEG's are unnecessary, expensive, and useless test that will show a false positive along with "TeenScreen" and others. Just like abuser think they can claim one has a "Chemical Imbalance". It cannot be measured or anything else. It amounts to "Hero Syndrome", Caretakers, Muchausen Syndrome by Proxy. The records are defrauded in order to make the ends justify the means. It is always "You cannot talk about the elephant in the room."

Like a doctor told me. A 5th grader can learn in one week's time what psychiatry is all about.
Many suffer from a "Grandiose Sense of Purpose" and suffer from a "Delusional Type Persecutory Disorder", Delusions, Paranoia, etc. It is the pot calling the kettle black. Much of psychiatry is the dark side of medicine. If the drugs are force fed then one cannot call it medicine.

I Carolyn Meece do not believe in doctor assisted suicide. Many psychiatrists are known to report his/her delusions in a court of law. One cannot solve any problem by using the same mindset which has created the problems.

Hippocratic Oath of Psychiatrists
"To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug, or give advice, which may cause his/her death."
They cannot even pass the smell test. Much of psychiatry works the same as destructive cults.

"Off Label" the applying of false labels and then illegally demanding to force feed the very drugs which evil side effects equals the false label. It is in violation of one's Amendment VIII rights. When ever one feels that his/her life is in great danger it is a violation of Amendment VIII rights. One's gut tells him/her the truth. Knowledge is Power.

People need to remember that a persons brain is as much a part of their bodies as a heart or pair of kidneys or cronic back pain. Because of the system many people go untreated for mental health and it hurts the community as well as the person.

My health insurance already consumes half my pension. I would be better off financially to apply for Title XIX and let government pay for my expenses.

There is nothing in life that doesn't have the tentacles of government clutching and strangling it. Much scribed in the Declaration of Independence of July 4, 1776 could apply to living in the U.S. today. John Hancock is rolling over in his grave.

It is so sad that there is still such stigma and that so many are still in denial that mental illness and addiction are real health problems that need effective treatment, in an era when so much progress has been made in tolerance of diverse cultures and lifestyles. Failure to recognize that mental illness and addictions are real health issues is costing employers in lost productivity, increases burden on taxpayers when ill people end up in government hospitals and prisons or homeless, and is wreaking havoc on families everywhere. Continued stigmatization of mental illness and addiction still keeps many people from seeking treatment.

Even more than fair insurance coverage, what is needed is truly effective treatment, more research, and real effort to find a cure.

It is great that those with mental health coverage will be treated more equitably, but I do fear this bill will result in many insurance companies dropping mental health coverage altogether and all those patients and their loved ones will be worse off than they are now.

Anyone who has a loved one suffering from mental illness, or who is suffering from mental illness really should check out NAMI's website and find a NAMI chapter near you. They offer patients and families so much free support the doctors, counselors, and hospitals never seem to tell you about, and have wonderful advocacy programs with volunteers who understand and care, support groups and training for both patients and families, and other helpful resources.

Harold L. Maio neglected to state that this "historic new legislation" will very likely be a line-your-pockets victory for the "discipline" of psychiatry.

I can see it now. In order to fully tap into this huge reservoir of monies, the shrinks will expand DSM definitions of various forms of mental illness, invent new ones (how about considering "avarice"), and, to a large extent, continue to rely on amorphous treatment therapies whose parameters, time and process-limited behavioral objectives and goals, are poorly delineated.

With the recent alleged unethical behavior of several prominent psychiatrists, I think the insurance companies that do decide to cover mental illness as the legislator has dictated should bind this "discipline's" practices tighter than a drum. The substantial number of psychiatrists who are nothing more than degreed and licensed pill-pushers need to demonstrate that their skills are something more than can be fitted into a prescription bottle.

I think that "Dubya" signed this into law so that when he is out of office, it will give him a way to pay for his sanitarium incarceration, and keep him from being declared legally competent to stand trial for war crimes, running the US economy into bankruptcy, causing the next great depression (which should begin in the spring or summer of 2009, if my guess is correct, when the next wave of sub-prime mortgages collapse), ignoring the constitutional rights of the citizens he swore to protect, and destrtoying the constitution that he also swore to uphold at all costs.

Whatever happens to George W. Bush in the future, it will very doubtless be paid for by the people of the US, and the rest of the world who have propped up the US economy while he and his friends raided it into utter chaos, and shortly, complete bankruptcy.

Keep your eyes open for the next market crash in the spring folks...IT IS COMING!

This law is not a victory. Insurance companies are already parsimonious (stingy) with their mental health benefits. If faced with a choice of expanding them or eliminating them, they will do the latter. The only solution is a federal law requiring insurers to cover mental health benefits permanently.

Yes, it will raise insurance costs, but the flip side is that it could improve worker productivity and even lead to millions of people obtaining, and holding down, jobs that they couldn't cope with before.

One serious, and needed, provision is missing from this law...the right of communities to indefinitely confine people who are showing signs of schizophrenic or erratic behavior. Currently most state laws allow for these dangerous people to be held only for a few days, at most.

About this blog

Getting the medical care you need isn't easy. Resources can be hard to find. Weighing the costs and benefits of proposed interventions can be difficult. Choosing a doctor or a hospital, negotiating with your insurer, staying on top of treatment trends, getting the best care possible -- all these can be nerve-wracking. This blog will bring you useful information, connect you with important resources and highlight the stories of other people like you.